Search the Internet          Tips

38 miners feared dead, divers
requisitioned to locate bodies

Divers were expected from Calcutta to trace the bodies in the 241-metre deep mine shaft of Bagdigi colliery, which belongs to Bharat Coking Coal Limited, Balaswami Akla, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, Ranchi, said.

Efforts to remove water from the mine suffered a setback when one of the seven pumps sucking out water at the rate of 4,000 gallons per minute broke down.

The pumps, which were dewatering the mine at the rate of 200,000 gallons per hour, would take another 48 hours to bring the water level down to enable a rescue team to look for bodies or survivors, if any, BCCL sources said.

The Bagdigi mine was flooded on Friday noon as 60 million gallons of water from adjacent Jairampur mine breached a barrier trapping the 38 miners, including two officials - manager A K Upadhyay and assistant manager P R Singh.

Mining experts, after studying the underground plans of the Bagdigi mine, said the thickness of the barrier, between Bagdigi and adjacent Joirampur mines at Lodna area, was reduced to 60 feet from 80 feet possibly to extract more coal.

As the thickness of the barrier was reduced by 20 feet, it could not withstand the heavy water surge from the adjacent mine, they opined.

"The 80-feet thick barrier stood like a strong wall between the two mines," they said.

Boring operations from the surface, which began on Friday evening to establish contact with the trapped miners, continued till late Saturday night, the sources said.

The BCCL management had earlier said the miners could have survived if they had managed to reach the right side of the flooded seam, which was at a higher level.

On Friday night, a 10-member rescue team had attempted to reach the flooded mine but abandoned its efforts due to lack of oxygen.

On Saturday morning, the rescue team with gas masks made another abortive attempt to establish contact with the miners.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi had to cut short his visit to the disaster site on Saturday after police used lathis to keep at bay miners and relatives of those trapped who were protesting the slow pace of rescue operations and demanding that guilty officials be 'hanged'.

Tell us what you think of this report